VIENNA (LifeSiteNews) – Following the recent announcement by Austria’s Catholic bishops supporting mandatory COVID injections, Austrian Catholics have accused the bishops of once again caving to political pressure in supporting the government’s jab mandate.
The Austrian Bishops’ Conference released a statement December 7, offered its opinion in the “debate about a temporary vaccination obligation” and approving of such a measure in certain circumstances.
Despite the “serious interference in the physical integrity and freedom of the individual” which mandatory shots would pose, the bishops defended such a measure “if, taking into account proportionality, all other possibilities have been exhausted to protect the population — in the case of the pandemic, the health system and thus human lives.”
The Austrian government is currently proposing to mandate the COVID shots as of February, for citizens as young as 14.
The bishops’ statement is in opposition to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (CDF) controversial 2020 guidance, which defended abortion-tainted injections in particular circumstances, but rejected mandatory injections.
Faithful Catholics have told LifeSiteNews of their sadness at the news, saying that the Austrian hierarchy allowed themselves to be pressured by the government in defending vaccine mandates.
A spokesman for Vienna-based St. Boniface Institute told LifeSiteNews how “we are saddened to see the Austrian Bishops’ Conference letting itself be harnessed by our chancellor once again to do his dirty work.”
LifeSiteNews has been informed that only a matter of days before the Austrian Bishops’ Conference released its statement, the official position was still in agreement with the CDF’s rejection of mandatory injections.
“This has happened before,” the spokesman continued. “Internal chats which were leaked this year show party functionaries threatening the Church in Austria with the removal of its tax privileges if the bishops refused to toe the line.”
Earlier this year, reports noted that Thomas Schmid, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Finance and a close confidante of former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, placed the bishops’ conference “under massive pressure” to agree with Kurz’s stance on immigration.
Leaked messages revealed that Kurz “told Schmid to strike fear into the clergy for daring to criticise Kurz’s refugee policy as inhumane. It has been reported that Schmid was to blackmail the bishops by suggesting that the government would strip the church of certain tax privileges, with Kurz issuing an instruction to ‘go full throttle’.”
Schmid’s own testimony of his conversation with the bishops’ conference head, Archbishop Franz Lackner, was that Lackner was “initially red, then pale, then shaky.”
With this recent history of caving to government influence, the St. Boniface Institute highlighted two aspects which “drove the government to exert this pressure on our bishops now.”
The first was “the rising number of prelates openly opposing the proposed vaccine mandate.”
The St. Boniface Institute has recently conducted interviews with Bishop Athanasius Schneider and former prefect of the CDF Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who protested against the measures proposed by the Austrian government. Additionally, “a number of parish priests [are] also speaking out” against the mandates, the group’s spokesman noted.
The second was the latest chancellor, Karl Nehammer, who has “notoriously low approval ratings and cannot, as a matter of political strategy, afford to lose even more support.”
“More Catholics, who historically have been strong supporters of the (formerly truly conservative) Austrian People’s Party, might withdraw their support if they learned about the CDF’s statement on vaccine mandates,” LifeSiteNews was told. “It is therefore no accident that this completely new and uncalled-for stance was revealed by the bishops only one day after Karl Nehammer took office.”
The Institute’s spokesman spoke of a “growing Catholic resistance in this country” which the political authorities “want to discourage.” To do so, “they need to be able to point out that ‘your bishops told you to support the vaccine mandate — so you aren’t true Catholics if you oppose it.’”
“We will continue to fight these developments and strongly support the CDF’s assertion that mandatory jabs are not legitimate,” affirmed the St. Boniface Institute.
LifeSiteNews spoke also with Franz Kalwoda, an Austrian layman involved in organizing a campaign to ask the Society of St. Pius X leadership to “re-evaluate” its position on the abortion-tainted injections.
“It is an insult to the mind to want to see the COVID vaccination campaign as only a medical measure,” said Kalwoda, criticising the Austrian bishops. “In view of these facts, it makes no sense to try to interpret away the evil in this matter with moral-theological sophistry, as the Vatican and many bishops do.”
Noting the abortion-link which the injections have, Kalwoda asked, “Can this vaccination, as well as the dictatorial approach of the politicians, still have a blessing with such a satanic origin? When a person can no longer decide what happens to his body, he is by definition a slave.”
“Reverend Bishops of Austria, have the courage to look the truth in the eye,” urged Kalwoda.
Meanwhile, Austrian Catholics have taken to the streets, praying the rosary for the future and liberty of the country.
This is the hope for Austria!
Over 300 faithful praying the #rosary together. Europe was saved many times with the help of the rosary! #SpiritOfLepanto pic.twitter.com/VBbIJDgdep— St. Boniface Institute (@Inst_StBoniface) December 8, 2021